This article explores the connection between Bernard Mandeville and Jeremy Bentham. Their analyses are complementary on two points: first, the descriptive sense of the utility principle, main axiom of Bentham's utilitarianism, relies on an implicit anthropological conception which Mandeville...

Italian Abstract: Per giustificare l’autorità e la validità della scienza economica, gli economisti sono spesso ricorsi all’argomento che le leggi e i postulati di questo sapere sono verità scientifiche, nel senso di verità empiriche, logiche o autoevidenti. Tuttavia, questo discorso, in...

It is one of the assumptions of this paper that what is usually considered as a single hedonistic tradition was in fact the result of very different approaches to the analysis of individual decisions. Some of the differences between these approaches were also discussed by authors who aimed at...

The work of Adam Smith is often interpreted as a justification of the natural order of economy, an apology which harmonizes individual and public interests. In addition to the concern for the economic system, Smith’s books comprise valuable passages in which the role of the state is explored...

This article to dedicated to the 230th anniversary of the publishing of Adam Smith`s work “The Wealth of Nations” (9 March, 1776). The subject of our study is the liberal world of Smith and social welfare. We highlight his contribution as a founder of the “homo economiqus” model, which...

What is to be underlined in characterizing the Ricardo’s quantity theory, is that it is a theory of determination of the value of money in a particular situation where money, whatever the form may be, shall be prevented from freely entering or leaving circulation. For Ricardo, the regulation...

This paper aims at analysing the acceptance by Jose da Silva Lisboa of the main tenets of the doctrine of economic liberalism. Special attention is given to his activities and writings between 1804 and 1810, when the influence provided by Adam Smith is particularly relevant. Silva Lisboa has...

It has been alleged that J M Keynes, quoting in the General Theory a passage from J S Mill’s Principles, misunderstood the passage in question and was therefore wrong to cite Mill as an upholder of the ‘classical’ proposition that ‘supply creates its own demand’....

The paper proposes a rational reconstruction of the arguments developed by Malthus and Ricardo in their 1815 essays, Grounds of an Opinion and An Essay on Profits, to repudiate and endorse a policy of free corn trade, respectively. Malthus envisaged defence and opulence as two mutually...

The History Schumpeter´s of Economic Analysis, is a tour de forcé of scholarship. The display of erudition is 'truly unbelievable. How could one man have acquired and then digested so much knowledge? Not only does the History offer two thousand years of economics, from Aristotle to Paul...